Lackluster final week coming for Red Sox – Boston Globe

BALTIMORE — Yankees icon Derek Jeter’s final baseball game will be in Boston next Sunday, and that’s the most significant thing that will happen over the final Red Sox homestand of the season, which begins Tuesday against the Rays.

Red Sox special events guru Dr. Charles Steinberg will be the other notable figure as we watch how he choreographs Jeter’s final act.

The rest is an exercise in playing out the string, going through the motions against two teams that also have nothing to play for.

Could you have imagined this at the start of the season? Boston, Tampa Bay, and New York finishing out the string at Fenway Park? When the schedule maker designed this final week, he or she likely did so with the idea that all three would be competing for something, the American League East title or a wild-card berth.

As it turned out, the Red Sox were a bust, the Rays never recovered from early-season pitching injuries, and the Yankees hung in for as long as they could with four-fifths of their rotation injured and their major free agents injured or underperforming.

All three, once considered the giants of the division, have a lot of repairing to do this offseason. They are the lowest-scoring teams in the league, with the Red Sox worst of all.

The Red Sox have used most of their time after July 31 to evaluate young players and try to project them for 2015. Good luck with that.

The worst part of this season might not be the poor record, terrible offense, and demise of a World Series championship team, but rather the fact there’s virtually little read on which of the prospects can actually play, be depended upon, and excel next season.